An August Beach Day
by silentmusic16
Summary: In which they discuss the structure and temporal importance of footprints in the sand. A sequel to "An August Afternoon: Revisited". An AU one-shot. Completed.


**This oneshot is in the same series as "An August Afternoon", hence the title. I've really grown to like the way I wrote for that oneshot, and I think I'm going to make some sort of series from stories set in this universe. They'll all be oneshots, however. But that's for a later date.**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>It was early in the morning on that August day, two weeks after Namine moved in. The air was cool but there was a hint of humidity that made my skin clammy despite the temperature. I was wearing a white t-shirt over a pair of black and white checkered swim trunks as I rode my bike to Namine's house. The bike made a small clinking sound as the chain pulled the wheel and that was the only sound I heard. The sun had yet to rise, but a few reddish rays lit up the bottom of the half-globe that was the sky.<p>

In this pre-sun timeslot, the entire world looked different. Everything was clearer without the smog of the city settling above my town as it did during the day. Most of the birds were still asleep, though there were a few that sung their song. On the handlebar of my bike was a canvas bag filled with two towels, a few water bottles, and my new cell-phone. I didn't want to get it wet when we got to the beach; water does bad things to phones, something I'd learned the hard way.

I got to her house within 5 minutes of leaving mine and stopped my bike. Stepping off, I listened to the world and heard nothing. It was as if the entire planet was empty. Then I pulled my phone out of the bag and called Namine; I didn't want to yell to her and wake the town.

"Hey, Nami, I'm outside." I said when I heard her answer.

"Got it." She whispered. "I'll be right down."

There was a click and she hung up.

A few minutes later and Namine was walking out of her house, dragging the door closed slowly. There was hardly a click when it shut.

My blonde friend was wearing a white cover-up over what I suspected was a blue bikini, judging by the blue that slightly showed around her breasts and…waist. I tried not to stare. She had her own canvas bag, but I could only see her sketchbook, which was just a bit taller than the bag. Namine yawned a few times, then smiled as she walked over.

"You didn't sleep much last night, did you?" I asked.

She laughed. "Nah, I was too excited. I haven't been to the beach in years."

I took the bag from her hand and hung it on the other side of the handlebars, then patted the wheel guard. It was a strip of reinforced metal hanging a few inches above my back wheel. "You can sit here."

She just nodded, yawned, and then sat sideways on it, with her right side leaning on me and her right arm around my waist. Her head rested on my back.

~!~

The bike ride was slow and peaceful. With Namine being as tired as she was, I didn't try striking up a conversation. It's not like we didn't have the whole day for that.

The sun was just about to rise when I hit the fork in the road. To the right was the road leading to the beach and to the left, the road leading to the first stop on our trip.

"Isn't the beach that way?" Namine asked when I turned left.

"I want to show you something first."

I pedaled a bit faster up the hill to get there before the sun rose. At the end of the road was a guardrail, protecting people from falling down the cliff we were currently on. Namine followed me as I stepped off and walked towards the cliff face. Just like with I had with the bridge, I sat on the wrong side of the railing, my feet hanging over the 100 or so foot fall. I had to help the nervous Namine over, and she scooted over to me for security.

"Watch as the sun rises." I looked to her, and then looked back. She was breathless.

From our vantage point on the cliff overlooking the ocean, the sun looked like a glowing red ball. Slowly, slowly, it rose above the horizon, giving the world light. The sky became a rusty yellow and orange and the thin clouds were a vibrant white. As it went higher we couldn't stand looking at it directly; the higher it climbed, the stronger it became. Nami was speechless the whole time and it made me feel good to know that _I _made her that way. When the sun was at its highest point for the morning, I stood up and helped Namine over the guardrail, before climbing over it myself.

"That…that was amazing."

"Right? It's beautiful. It was the reason why I wanted to leave so early."

"Then I'm glad we did."

Both of us got back on the bike and I pedaled it downhill to the fork in the road, this time going towards the beach. Namine was more awake now, and I could feel her head moving, taking in the sights. When we passed a beach, she asked me why we hadn't stopped.

"That's not where I'm taking you; we're going somewhere special." Then my stomach rumbled. "And all this biking's gotten me hungry."

She just giggled.

~!~

After a breakfast of eggs, toast, and coffee, I took Namine further down the road. It was about 8:30 at the time. A few minutes passed and I stopped the bike in front of a forest of palm trees. Even from that point I could smell the salty sea air. Due to the sun, the air was already warmer than it had been when I picked her up.

"Follow me; we're almost there."

With Namine besides me, I walked my bike through a hardly noticeable path through the trees. It wasn't long until we reached the hidden coast my older brother had shown me.

"This," I stretched my arms out wide to take it all in "is my secret place."

With white sand, dark blue surf, and a forest of palm trees both shading most of it and guarding it from prying eyes, the beach I took Namine to was beautiful. On either side were tall, rocky cliffs which also helped veil it from others. She looked around the small beach a bit and tried to take it all in.

"How'd you find this place?" she asked.

"My brother showed it to me the day he died." I answered truthfully.

"…What?"

"My big brother Ven took me here one day." I began, "And it turned out that he also died here that same day."

"It was the summer of my 6th grade year", I explained to her. "My dad had told Ven to take me to the beach on such a beautiful day, even though he was supposed to hang out with his friends. He was 16 at the time, and I was only 12.

Ven was my older brother and a role model to me. He seemed to have it all; great friends, a cute, blue-haired girlfriend, the highest grades in his class, and he still had time to spare so that he could work. I envied him just as much as I looked up to him. I mean, his life was basically perfect. Oddly enough, we looked so much alike that, if the age difference wasn't so obvious, we could've passed for identical twins.

The day he died, he showed me this hidden beach that a friend of his had shown him a few years earlier. He told me how no one knew about it besides his best friends and how he'd come here a lot with them. So we hung out on the beach together that day, swimming and making sandcastles and having as much fun as we could. It was a blast.

But at one point he got a call on his cell, so he answered and turned his back to the water. Being the idiot that I was, I jumped in without him knowing and immediately felt the rip tide pull me out to sea. It was terrifying to not be in control of myself, to be utterly defenseless against the current. I struggled and struggled to get out, but I exhausted myself and eventually started to drown. The water began filling my lungs. I honestly thought that it was the end.

'Ven!' I yelled with the last of my breath. He turned around and when he saw what was happening, he dropped his phone and jumped in.

I was relieved when he grabbed my arm and began to pull me to shore. He tried calming me down the whole time he swam.

'Come on, we're almost there. We can make it.'

And then things got worse.

I still remember the look on his face when the jellyfish stung him. He suddenly froze in place and his eyes grew wide in pain. He yelled, let out a blood-curdling scream like he was on fire or something. I don't know how, but I summoned up all the strength in my body and got us to the shore.

His leg was inflamed and looked like it was about to explode. There were still a couple of tentacles stuck to that leg, and he was breathing in horrid gasps. I called an ambulance, but he died before it reached us. It turned out that Ven was allergic to jellyfish stings, but since we never tested him for that, we never knew."

"Wow…I'm-I'm sorry."

"It's fine." I smiled. "Ven wasn't the type of kid who'd want me to mourn for so long, so I won't. I plan on naming my first kid after him anyway."

She smiled warmly before giving me a hug. "You're so brave."

"Of course not; I'm just not going to forget that he saved my life. He gave me a second chance and I won't ruin it by being sad forever."

~!~

When we made sure we had everything we needed for the rest of the day in our bags, we began walking closer to the water, trying to find the perfect spot to set up. The sand was hard for me to cross because it shifted with every step, but it seemed to take more out of Namine due to her lung disease. Every step for her was labored and her breathing was heavy and ragged. And then she fell.

Namine tumbled down onto her knees in the sand, unable to support her body with enough oxygen to stand. She could hardly breathe. I offered her my hand, but she refused. I saw a few tears in her eyes.

"No. I…I've got this." She struggled up, her entire frame shaking, and then she took a few labored breaths. I could only watch as she tried to prove to _herself_ that she could do this.

_Wow._ I thought. _I won't ever be as strong as her._

Namine took a few steps and I followed, ready for anything. She began to fall again, but this time I caught her.

"You don't have to do this all yourself. I'm here for you."

She gave me the biggest, most sincere smile that I ever received.

Using me as a support and with a new determination in her eyes, Namine began to walk.

We found a great spot not too far from the shade and not too far from the water and laid one of the towels I brought.

~!~

It was about 9 am now and the sun was growing hotter and hotter. Namine had taken off her white cover-up and underneath she wore a blue bikini with flower print.

_One point to me for the guess._

The girl wasn't exactly top-heavy, but to say that she was flat would be a lie. In fact, I thought she was just about the right size, chest wise. She was pretty skinny, but I chalked that up to not being able to exert herself, which meant that she couldn't really exercise too much. And she was pale – really, really pale, so there was no way in hell she'd ever tan. For her, it must've been 'put on sunblock or roast'.

"Mind rubbing some sunblock on my back?" she asked while spreading the white cream onto her arms and the rest of her front.

"Not at all."

Namine turned on her stomach and I squeezed the lotion onto my hand before rubbing it into her skin. I tried really, really hard not to stare, but it was damn hard. I covered her upper back, lower back (as quickly as possible), and then the backs of her legs.

"Thanks."

For a while, we sat in silence. The water crept up on the shore, then pulled back like a scared animal. The warm breeze ruffled the palm tree leaves and our hair. Above us, the sun warmed the sand and the ocean. The smell of the salty water relaxed me. When I looked really far ahead, I could swear that I saw a whale come up for air.

Next to me, Namine had her sketchbook out. Beside her were a few colored pencils, and in her hand was a graphite one, meant for drawing outlines. She wasn't very far into the drawing, but so far it looked pretty good. The only things I could make out were palm leaves.

"What're you drawing?" I looked over.

"Nuh uh! No peeking!" she gave a teasing smile and pulled the sketchpad closer to her chest.

I just laughed and turned back towards the shore.

~!~

An hour or two later, Namine slammed her sketchpad shut without warning. I jumped.

"Come on! We're at the beach, we should go in the water!"

I stood up, grabbed her hand, and together we ran to the waves.

The water that day wasn't very wild, and the waves hardly reached past our knees even 5 feet into the ocean. The water itself was kind of cold, but it wasn't unbearable.

After we'd gotten a bit used to the water, Namine slowly walked towards me, hips shaking, face…unreadable. As she got closer, I started getting nervous. Turns out it was for a good reason; when she reached me, she splashed me in the face and began to laugh. The water was pretty salty.

"So that's how you wanna play, huh? Take…this!" I splashed her back and it turned into an all out war. Water flew all over and we laughed and yelled as loud as we could. It was a lot of fun.

Obviously, Namine couldn't play _too_ much, as her disease started acting up again. Halfway through a splash she started coughing these sickeningly dry wheezes. She bent over, hands on her knees, and continued hacking out her lungs.

"Hey, you okay?" I asked.

A few more hard coughs and she took a deep breath, then stood up straight. "I'm – I'm fine."

_No you're not. You're hurting and I'm just making it worse by making you play._

"Why don't we go sit down? I'm pretty thirsty anyway." I offered.

Back on our towel, I brought out the two water bottles and handed one to her. She was looking out towards the water, avoiding my eyes.

"I'm sorry." She whispered.

"For?"

"Ruining today. If I wasn't so damn sick –"

I cut her off. "You didn't ruin anything. Don't go blaming yourself for something you have no control over."

She turned to me, angry. "So who am I supposed to blame? My _mother_?"

Her mother, however, had died of the same disease 13 years ago, when Namine was 5.

I had no answer. "No. No, but…it's not your fault. It's no one's fault."

Namine turned back towards the ocean and an uncomfortable silence fell over us. The only sounds I could hear were the waves and the labored breathing of the girl beside me.

_I wish there was something I could do. Her breathing is just so…unnatural. _

After a while she turned back to me.

"Now I have a reason to be sorry; I made everything all awkward between us."

I smirked. "I helped to, you know."

I stood up and offered Nami my hand. "Wanna take a little walk?"

"I'd love to."

She grabbed my hand and stood up, then changed her mind and held onto my arm instead. We walked around the sand, stared out at the waves, enjoyed a shared silence. The closer we got to the water, the cooler and more compact the sand became. But the further we were, the sand grew hotter and a lot looser. The wet sand was definitely better. While walking the shore line with Nami, waves lapping at our ankles, I couldn't help but notice that the beach was a bit bigger then I remembered. It took a lot longer than I thought it would to get all the way from one end to the other. A trail of footprints outlined our little trip around the hidden beach. On the right were small, petite little footprints, while next to them were a bigger pair.

Back at the towel, I sat cross-legged and watched as the waves devoured the sand on the shoreline. Namine laid her head on my shoulder and, from what I could tell, was looking at the same thing.

"How long do you think our footprints will last? This _is_ a secret beach after all; I doubt that we have to worry about people ruining them." She asked out of the blue.

_I guess I was wrong._ I thought. _She's looking at our footprints._

"Probably not too long. I mean, look at them; some of them already have some sand falling and filling them up."

"Ignoring that for a second -"

I cut her off with a smirk. "What's 'that'? Logic?"

An elbow stabbed my ribcage. "Okay, I deserved that."

She gave me a smirk of her own, then continued. "Anyway, ignoring _logic_, do you think someone in the future will look at these and wonder what we did today? Or if we were important people? Or if we were in love?

_Love? It's a bit too early for that, Nami. But I do like you. I like you a lot._

"I'd suspect that the people of the future would have better things to do than contemplate old footprints, but I would think that they'd wonder how they stayed for so long. The only answer would be some sort of super-fast heating."

"What do you mean?" She tilted her head to the side.

_Gah! So cute!_

"Have you ever heard of Pompeii? Well the people there were basically flash-fossilized after Mount Vesuvius erupted. Everything was left intact, albeit covered with ash and basically made into plaster. A lot of people were found and some of them were totally preserved as stone. "

"They were frozen in time, just like that?" She looked distant, like she was imagining the victims of the volcano as they were super-heated and suffocated by ash.

"Yep."

"Imagine if, right now, a volcano erupted. Do you think we'd be frozen in time too? Would we join the ranks of history, preserved forever?"

"I don't know. But I'd like to think that it'd be better than rotting underground after we died."

"Me too."

~!~

Without us noticing the passage of time, the sun began to set, lighting the world on fire. Above us, the clouds took on a darker hue when the sky behind them blazed red and yellow and orange. Before we left, we stood on the shore and watched the sunset. Namine was on my right, absorbed in the just how beautiful the world could be. I, on the other hand, couldn't help but notice how beautiful _she_ looked with the glow of the sun on her skin. I wanted to reach out and touch her, just feel the heat of her body, but decided against it. Why ruin the moment?

After the sun had set, Namine and I went back to the main road. I began to pedal us back home, but not before I stopped at a little ice cream shop not far from the beach.

"Wait here." I told her before I ran in the store. A few minutes later, I came back out with two sea-salt ice cream flavored popsicles.

"Is this sea-salt ice cream? It's my favorite!" Namine was ecstatic.

"It's mine too."

By the time I got her back home, it was just about 9:30 pm. I forgot how late the sun sets in the summer, and I didn't realize the time. I walked her to her front door.

"Thanks for taking me to the beach, Roxie. I really enjoyed today."

"My pleasure."

For a few seconds we stood there awkwardly, not looking directly at each other. That is, until Namine leaned in and gave me a little peck on the lips.

"There's more where that came from. Well, that's if you keep going out of your way for me like you do." A teasing smirk graced her face.

_Awesome_.

"I'm not going out of my way for you. I just want you to be happy." I grinned.

"And that's what I'm talking about. Here, you deserve another." She went in for another kiss when the door opened and, standing imposingly in the doorway, was her father.

Mr. Grey, first name Ansem, was pretty nice the few times I'd met him since Namine and I had become friends. He never seemed outwardly against my existence, anyway. But when he saw me on the porch about to get a kiss from his daughter, the expression on his face was unreadable. That was scarier than any angry face he could've given me.

"Bye Roxie! I'll see you tomorrow!" Namine called as she walked passed her father and into the house. "Oh, I almost forgot! Check your bag when you get home!"

Ansem continued staring at me before he uttered the most frightening words I'd ever heard: "You hurt her, I hurt you."

The door closed and I sighed.

_Close call. _Then I thought the scene over. _But he never said that Namine and I couldn't kiss…._

~!~

Once I was in my room, I emptied the canvas bag to see what she had given me. I couldn't find anything until my fingers touched a piece of paper that hadn't been in there earlier. It turned out that, when I wasn't looking, Namine had slipped the sketch she was working on earlier into my bag.

The drawing was beautiful and I could see why she'd go to college for art; she was really, really good. It was a picture of the hidden beach I'd taken her to, and it was basically perfect. Palm trees covered the sand, which grew darker as it neared the blue water. Every color was vibrant, alive, and the drawings themselves were lifelike.

_Whoa._

I turned it over to find a note in the back, written in Namine's flawless script.

_Dear Roxas, _it said. _I hope you like the picture; I made it just for you._

I could only smile.

Later on that night, after I had hung the drawing on the wall my bed leaned against, I laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I played out a slow baseline I had just made up and the deep sound resonated around my empty room. The room was warm, but it wasn't uncomfortable, and the slight breeze that passed in from my window felt great. Pools of moonlight on the floor faded in and out of existence with each passing cloud.

"_Imagine if, right now, a volcano erupted. Do you think we'd be frozen in time too? Would we join the ranks of history, preserved forever?"_ I remembered my blonde more-than-a-friend saying.

_Yeah, imagine that. How would it feel to be flash-fossilized? To be preserved forever as a living testament to your time. To be instantaneously made into a stone god, a being that never died._

_Well, with you Namine, I don't think I'd mind being preserved forever._

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><p><strong>Just like with it's companion oneshot, this is inspired by "The Pillows" (a band) and "FLCL" an anime. Some of the writing is kind of like my favorite author's as well.<strong>

**In other news, I have a blog now! The link's on my homepage, so check it out if you get the chance. It isn't very big yet because I just opened it this month.**

**Reviews are love and even if it's just one sentence I'll appreciate it! **


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